1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to user behavior models and more specifically to generating actionable user behavior models based on clickstreams.
2. Introduction
Consumers are viewing and interacting with media in many locations and through many devices. In the last decade numerous media devices and media outlets have been introduced into the market, including Tivo, iPods capable of playing audio and video, PDAs capable of displaying video, Youtube, Slingbox, Netflix rentals and streamed media, etc. These recently introduced devices are in addition to more established media outlets such as broadcast television, brick and mortar movie rental stores, cable television, on-demand movies, etc. These different devices have a variety of features, some overlapping, some not. This distributed content consumption makes it difficult to collect and analyze comprehensive usage data about an individual or a group. A wealth of information is potentially available, but it is distributed in many locations in incompatible formats and in some cases is not even stored. What information is gathered is typically not uniform and not normalized. Providing a customized user experience is difficult for network operators and service providers with a woefully incomplete picture of a user's preferences, habits, and tendencies.
Accordingly, what is needed in the art is an improved way to gather a unified picture of user behavior and actions to provide customized content.